Ria Sinha

TERI University

My professional career started at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi, as a Research Fellow, where I worked on the development of national citizen satisfaction index with the human development index (HDI) method. The study involved economic analysis of several indicators of citizen satisfaction. Later I joined the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and worked on taxation issues. It was then my interest on carbon taxation in climate change mitigation efforts took shape. In July, 2011, I joined TERI University as a Research Scholar at the Department of Policy Studies, wherein I am also a recipient of HSBC scholarship for my doctoral research.The topic of research is “Emerging Sustainability Issues in Business: a Study of the Interface between Environmental, Social and Governance variables and Business with special reference to the Indian Corporate Sector”. Corporations being one of the biggest economic agents to engineer the changes in climate change management, it is very much essential to study the role of market pricing of sustainability efforts by corporations including investors. Sustainability as a concept has gained much attention among business enterprises by incorporating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors in business decisions. However, to ensure that these factors are fully operative, it needs a pre-existence of a market that acknowledges such typically non-financial factors as impacting variables. While this type of investment is a booming market in the US and Europe, the developing economies like India are also showing interest by accepting these efforts. Hence my study proposes to examine whether and how far the Indian market is ready to the cause of sustainability and recommend a self-sustaining mechanism for financing sustainability business efforts. At the same time, it is equally pertinent to estimate its market size. Needless to say this will depend on the level of climate change consciousness among the investment community i.e. investment bankers, asset and fund managers, whose awareness levels vary across regions. The proposed doctoral research is highly appropriate keeping this in view. In this context, I have also participated in workshops and conferences like SICRISA i.e. Support to Improve Climate Change Research and Information Services in South Asia and have some publications to my credit in reputed journals.